Growers and retailers can both flourish when growers get strong prices as the retail price stays at a good profitable level. It just takes some smart merchandising to achieve the ideal result.
Michael Gatz says this was proven in the fall, with a successful promotion with Jewel Food Stores Inc., based in the Chicago suburb of Melrose Park, IL.
Gatz, the director of business development for Bushmans’ Inc., a major potato shipper located in Rosholt, WI, is ebullient over a fall promotion program with Jewel.
Gatz said Bushmans’ potato sales to Jewel quadrupled over the volume sold a year earlier.
“You don’t always have to lower the price to increase sales,” Gatz underscored.
Gatz explained that Bushmans’ hook was to give away a Nickey Camaro as a consumer drawing prize in the Jewel promotion. Of course, point-of-purchase materials attracted consumer attention to the large Jewel displays. Bushmans’ potato displays varied in size from four-feet square to four-by-16 feet.
Gatz said the idea of the whole promotion came from Scott Bennett, Jewel’s produce sales and merchandising manager.
Nickey is a performance car design. While Nickeys have been built since the 1960s, it was a new, modern 630-horsepower Nickey Camaro muscle car that Bushmans’ provided to customers needing to buy potatoes and wanting to win a tremendous sports vehicle.
The Jewel promotion ran from late September until Thanksgiving. That is a time of good consumer demand; thus a “foolish” time for a grower to lose money on slashing prices to create a retail loss leader. Gatz said the cost of a sports car is far less than the losses that could be incurred to slashing f.o.b. prices.
“We didn’t give anything away at a time that we have a lot of product and want to push sales," he said. "This was good for the grower and good for the retailer.”
Meanwhile, Bennett rallied his troops to universally support the Camaro promotion.
Gatz said there are about 180 Jewel stores in Chicagoland. During the giveaway Gatz personally visited 80 of those stores. Gatz would call his friend Bennett if a promotion display was lacking. Bennett’s people would immediately fix such problems, and Bennett would promptly report back to Gatz.
“I really, really want to send a ‘thank you’ to Scott and his produce managers, merchandisers and produce clerks,” Gatz said. “They did a tremendous job.”
Although the Nickey display contest ended in November, Gatz said that Jewel’s potato sales continued to be strong in December.
